That Dear Octopus
by Aisukuri-Mu Studio
Summary: .:C:. Gravity Falls was no New York City. Leo, Raph, Don, and Mikey had thought it would be an uneventful summer break out in the dense mountain forests of Oregon. They didn't even know anything about their Uncle Yoshi, who they were staying with. But then Leo finds a red journal out in the forest and things get weird. Real weird. And that's just the start. Gravity Falls AU.
1. Ep 1: Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

Being shipped cross-country to stay at your uncle's creepy cabin in the woods somewhere out in the dense mog of Oregon mountain forests wasn't any twelve-year-old's ideal way of spending their summer vacation. Gravity Falls was no New York City. In fact, some might go so far as to apt the two cities were complete opposites.

They would be right.

Donatello took two steps into the attic he was going to share with his three brothers for two and a half months and thought he was going to die.

"There's...there's no outlets!" he said, his hands pressed to the sides of his head as if to box in the rising panic. His duffel bag and suitcase clattered to the floor. The world became faint. "Oh. Oh boy. Where am I going to plug in my tablet? M-my phone? I don't-"

"It'll be all right, Don," Leo was quick to say. He hurried to his brother's side and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Maybe this'll be good for us."

"Yeah, this place is amazing, Dee!" Mikey crowed from atop his new bed, trying to tape his Wingnut and Screwloose poster to the wall alongside Silver Sentry. Having smoothed out the wrinkles to his satisfaction, the youngest of the quadruplets turned around on socked feet and proudly shoved out both of his hands. "Look! Ten minutes in and I've already got splinters!"

Between his youngest brother admiring the pinpricks of wood somehow fastly lodged in his skin and the humphing, bored groans from his third brother, who had literally and gracelessly tossed his clothes into the drawers of his nightstand and the chest at the foot of his bed before lying face-down on his mattress, Leonardo knew he would have his hands full.

All. Summer.

What he didn't expect was to find a bunkered-down scarlet book decorated with a golden flower-faced symbol and engraved with a large number '3' in the forest as he was hanging signs for his uncle's "Mystery Shack." Neither did he expect that-out of all of his brothers to get a crush just two days into their recent move-their own goofy-grinned Michelangelo had a girlfriend for all of three hours. Said girlfriend actually turned out to be a bunch of frogs in a trenchcoat begging for his hand in marriage-"You guys are butt-faces!"-from whom they had to flee on the back of their cousin Karai's battered golf-cart. But they got a few trinkets from their uncle's gift shop in the end. For his recent heartbreak, Michelangelo received a turtle-shell grappling hook that he dubbed the "turtle line."

But all of that was just the start.

They had no idea how much weirder their summer was yet going to get.

* * *

Uncle Yoshi was a quiet and secret man. From the moment he entered a room until the moment he exited it, the four brothers watched him with wide eyes so as not to miss any tells or hints about his mysterious person. They had learned early on in their stay that the man would never voluntarily tell them anything about himself-if he was inclined to talk at all. The most any of them had ever heard him say in one sitting had been a grumbling, "Dinner is ready."

Their cousin Karai confirmed this, and she was his _daughter_.

So the morning Uncle Yoshi told them over the breakfast table, as straight-faced and dry as ever, that he wanted to take them fishing, Raph had choked on his milk and Mikey had forgotten he was syrup racing with Don and squeezed a sticky glob on top of his head.

"Uh...what?" Leonardo asked, not sure how to remind his uncle they came from New York City. Their lives had been quite urban and quite lake-less. Prior to this impromptu transcontinental visit of theirs, they had never been outside even their own borough before. "Sorry, Uncle Yoshi, but we don't know how to fish."

"You will learn," was all the man had said before he turned and departed from the room.

"' _You will learn_ ,'" Mikey attempted to impersonate with a faux-gravelly undertone.

Raph reached over and smacked the top of his little brother's head. Sharply, he cried out, "AGH, what is this-syrup?!"

"Hahaha, what's that song? _I'm stickin' with you! Cuz I'm made out of_ -OW OW OW OW-!"

They ended up on a pier out on Lake Gravity Falls armed with life-vests, crudely-stitched personalized hats, and neon green DNR wristbands, staring wide-eyed out at the expanse of pure lake before them.

"Dude. I've never seen so much blue," Mikey whispered. "Except maybe for your eyes, Leo."

"Uh, thanks?"

Their older cousin Karai, standing at their side, rapped her knuckles gently and playfully against the top of Leonardo's head. Leo raised a hand to rub at his afflicted crown underneath his fishing hat and all four brothers lifted their chins to her as she said, "Y'know, I can think of about a million better things to do than get saddled with awkward family fishing and 'bonding' time."

"You can?" Raph asked with a swelling sigh of relief.

Karai pulled out a folded magazine page from her jeans pocket. She flipped the face of it around and her four younger cousins huddled close to read.

"A monster photo contest?" Don scrunched up his nose. "But we didn't get any pictures of those talking frogs."

"Which _I_ didn't even get a chance to see, so those don't count," Karai said. "No. I'm thinking we should snag a photo of something much bigger…"

"You mean there's other monsters here in Gravity Falls?" Mikey's eyes lit up.

Karai shrugged. "I don't know. But if what you said about those frogs is true, then I'm guessing something else has got to be out there."

"Yeah, well, whatever it is we snap can't be shin-high." Raph frowned. He crossed his arms over his life-vest. "One thousand dollars? I mean, those frogs were weird, but a monster worth that much is gonna have to be gigantic."

"You mean, something that makes people terrified when they see it," Leo said. He ticked off on his fingers. "Something that makes them yell-"

"-HELP! I SAW IT! I SAW IT AGAIN! YOU SIMPLY MUST BELIEVE ME!" An old, balding man with a wide and greying handlebar mustache whipped past the five children and down to the grassy beachside.

Leo grinned at Raph. He crooked a thumb over his shoulder. "Something like that?"

Raph's smirk widened back.

The five turned and ran down the wooden boards towards the shore. The balding, frantic man upended a table loaded with bait and grabbed a man to shake. Several other fisherfolk moved closer; a crowd began to thicken. A young woman in a navy blue tight-fitting suit dotted with teal orbs bent to pick up a calculator as the old man yelled, "The Gravity Falls Cthugga! You must come quick, or it will swim away once more!"

"Cthugga?" Don echoed. He lifted a hand to his chin. "I've never heard of that monster in any myth or legend…"

The stranger spun on his heels, eyes fixing on the tallest of the quadruplets. He released his current captive and leapt forward, latching on to Donnie by his shoulders. Raph and Leo stepped forward on either side, but the man gave no indication he saw them. He answered breathlessly with an accented and pitched voice, "That's because it's only a local legend! The creature of the Gravity Falls Lake. It's real, though! I promise! I've just seen it-look what it did to my boat!"

The graying-haired man tossed a hand towards a secondary pier, where the two jagged, split-apart pieces of what had once been a small fishing vessel were sinking.

The man rambled on, "It was quite terrifying! It had a long, U-shaped face, not dissimilar to a whale's snout, I suppose, and bright, speckled skin with a dozen tails! And right after it chewed through my boat, it scurried towards Scuttlebutt Island!"

"That's enough, Dad!" cried a new voice, stomping forward. A man donning the uniform of the park rangers, hat pulled so low as if to hide his face, grabbed the balding stranger by his arm. With a firm tug, he dragged the man away from Don and the gathering audience. "What have I told you about scaring our visitors? There's no such thing as this 'Cthugga'!"

"But-but my boy Sal, I-I've got proof this time!"

"Can it, Dad! You said that last time, too, and the time before that! By now, everyone just thinks you're a crazy old man. Is that what you want? You used to be a _professor_ …!"

As the bickering pair departed, the crowd dwindled with the chuckles and murmurings of 'oh, that funny, old, mustachioed coot.' Uncle Yoshi marched past, having returned from the trunk of his car with his arms full of fishing poles and his toolbox full of bait. Karai grabbed Leo and Don's hands and led her four cousins after her father.

Shoulder-to-shoulder, hands clasped before them, the five explained to him the rumors of the Cthugga and pleaded with him to let them monster hunt instead of fish. But somewhere between, "Please, Uncle Yoshi?" and "We don't want to be bored all day," the man must have grown frustrated. With a deep-set frown, he cut off the conversation and dropped the boat's keys into his daughter's hand before she had even finished talking. Then, without saying another word, he walked back down the pier, his grey fishing toolbox tucked under one arm, leaving several rods of fishing poles behind. Karai pumped her fist with a cheer, but Leo and Mikey watched their uncle's receding back.

They glanced at each other with twin frowns and wondered if the promise of one thousand dollars was worth the weight sitting heavy at the base of their throats.

* * *

Before they set sail for Scuttlebutt Island, Leo made them all visit the lakeside store to purchase sunscreen. Donatello took the opportunity to stock up on something he assured them would be "just as important as protecting them from sunburn." As soon as they were back onboard their uncle's motorboat, he explained why.

"All right, guys," Donnie said with his 'lecture voice' coming on, "if we want to win this photo contest, we've got to do it right. What's the number one problem with most monster hunts?"

Kicking his legs while perched on top of a covered barrel of fish food, Mikey burst with fisted hands, "You're a side character and you die within the first five minutes of the movie!"

"N...no." Don turned to his other brothers and cousin standing nearby. "Any-anyone else? No?" He sighed, exaggeratedly long and drawn out. "C'mon guys, camera trouble!"

At their continued blank stares, the second-youngest lifted from behind the crate he stood beside five small bags he had brought out of the Gravity Falls Lake convenience shop. "So we wouldn't be caught with the Cthugga unawares-and by 'unawares' I mean 'without a camera'-I took the liberty of buying us _twenty-five_ disposable cameras!"

Donnie handed a bag to each brother and one to Karai as he narrated, "There's four in those bags for each of you, one camera strapped to each of my ankles, three taped under my life-vest, three more stuffed away in my bag, and one hidden just under the fishing hat Uncle Yoshi gave me!" As if to prove his words, Don lifted the beige, brimmed hat from his brow and revealed the yellow disposable camera balanced on the top of his head. "Now there's no possible way we'll miss getting a picture of that Cthugga!"

"Great thinking, Donnie," Leo praised as Mikey ooh'ed and ahh'ed at one of the disposable cameras from his bag and accidentally took a blinding picture of his own eye. Mikey squawked and tossed the camera away from himself into the lakewater beside their boat, then fell off the barrel and crashed to his back on the deck.

"Mikey!" Raph was ready to scold.

Don threw out an arm and assured, "No, that's okay! That's okay. That's why I brought extras. We still have twenty-four left. Just...don't lose any more, Mikey, okay?"

"I can't see," Mikey moaned.

"Okay, so here's the plan." Karai set her bag of cameras by her feet. "Since I'm the only one that can actually drive the boat, I figure I'll man the wheel and be the captain-"

"-wait, why do you get to be the captain?" Leo frowned. "Why can't _I_ be the captain?"

"Well, I'm the oldest..." Karai began. She pressed her thumb to her chest. "Besides, it just makes sense. What kind of twelve-year-old gets to be captain when you have a sixteen-year-old onboard?"

"Then, can I be co-captain?"

"There's no such thing as-"

"-Raph!" Don cried. "What did I just say? Don't lose your cameras!"

"A _bird_ was going to attack me. What did you want me to do, just let it poke out my eyeballs?"

"Wait, Dee, did you say lose our cameras?"

"NO!"

"Dude, I just threw two away."

"ARGH, twenty-one!" Donnie threw his hands skyward as if pleading the heavens. "All right, at least we still have twenty-one cameras. Now just don't lose any more, guys. Is that so much to ask for?"

Karai sighed. "You can be co-captain." She crossed her arms over her chest.

"Yes!"

Mikey leaned close to the other two. "Can I be associate to the co-captain?"

Leo's grin was very wide and very fond. He put a hand against his hip and raised his other with his index finger lifted, modeling a pose he had seen his favorite character from Space Heroes do many-a-time before. "As co-captain, I authorize that request."

Mikey cheered.

Karai rolled her eyes. "Well, as first captain, need I remind you that our number one order of business here is to lure the Cthugga out with this." She gestured a hand to the barrel of food Mikey had earlier fallen from.

The youngest quadruplet gasped and hurried to the barrel's side, pressing his hands flat against the wooden bulge. He turned to the others with round blue eyes. "Permission to taste some?"

Karai and Leo exchanged glances.

Karai bit the inside of her cheek. "Okay," she said slowly. "Granted."

"Permission co-granted," Leo said through a stifled smile.

Mikey raised his hand and loudly declared, "Permission associate go-granted!" He slipped off the lid to the barrel and stuffed his hand inside. His fingers grabbed hold of a large chip of fish food. He tugged it free, admired the fragile green piece, and then licked it from top to bottom.

It took two seconds for Mikey to begin coughing and hacking as he furiously combed at his tongue with his fingers.

It took several more minutes for all of the rest of them to stop laughing.

* * *

"Dude, I can't believe you actually tasted it," Raph muttered. The trail up Scuttlbutt Island's hill was wide and easy to follow, even through the dense fog that blanketed the trees. Though he and Mikey brought up the rear of the travelling party, the second oldest wasn't worried about getting separated from Leo and Karai, who stood at their forefront and carried lanterns. "What were you thinking?"

"Bucket list, dude. Now I never have to wonder what fish food tastes like again," Mikey answered.

"...Mikey, do me a solid and answer me honestly: why?"

"Guys, check this out!"

Don, further ahead of the two, stood in front of a wooden sign at the trail's edge. Karai and Leo turned around from further ahead, lifting their lanterns eye-level. Mikey and Raph jogged to their brother's side and gazed up.

'SCUTTLEBUTT ISLAND' was painted in thin, black letters, easily readable, on a board nailed to the wide girth of a tree's trunk. Next to it, a smaller sign, painted in a similar scrawny and dark ink, read 'BEWARE!' Donnie put up his arm and covered the first seven letters of the larger plank. He snickered.

"Butt Island."

Mikey and Raph laughed.

Karai rolled her eyes, turned around, and resumed hiking. Leo's gaze followed his older cousin. "Guys, cut it out," he called and gestured with a curved arm for them to follow and keep up.

"Speaking of butts," Raph added behind a cupped hand. Mikey and Don laughed even more.

Their laughter sharply cut off the instant a deep, grumbling roar resounded through the forest.

All five travelers stopped, their eyes wide.

"Did you hear that?" Don asked the silence. Mikey idled to his side. Raph's eyes darted about through the trees and fog, but could see nothing.

Leo's grin widened. He looked to Karai and Karai looked down to him. Karai whispered, "This is it! This is it!" and pressed her fist excitedly to Leo's shoulder twice. Leo pushed his own fist against her side, enthusiastically hushing back, "This is so cool!"

More carefully, the two led the way onward through the mire and forest.

"H-hey guys! Wait up!" Mikey called and Raph huffed as the three followed close behind.

There was a moment, when the tree line broke out onto a small overlook near the middle of the lake, where they thought they had found the Cthugga sitting in the water. But what they had thought was the dome-like head of the beast turned out to be an overturned rowboat. And when the most thrilling creatures their eyes fell upon were several beavers that sunbathed on the underside of the capsized vessel, their shoulders sagged.

Mikey was perhaps the only one still in high spirits, taking pictures with his last disposable camera of the beavers and giving several exclamations of, "Oh, how cute!" and "Lookit the little guys!"

Leo left his lantern and bag of cameras by Donnie and hopped to a large rock below the low cliffside. He placed a hand over his eyes to peer over the water and spy any unnatural disturbances, but all the waves he could see were the low wakes of drifting fishing vessels. Discouraged, he sat and propped his elbow up on his knee, resting his cheek in the palm of his hand. He tossed loose pieces of gravel to the water and watched the tiny ripples distort his reflection. "Well, that's just great. We ended up ditching Uncle Yoshi over nothing," he sighed. "What are we going to tell him…?"

"He genuinely wanted to spend time with us, too. I guess...I guess we do the only thing we should: apologize," Donnie said, fiddling with one of his disposable cameras and wondering if it was worth it to take some pictures of the beavers like Mikey was.

Leo sighed and pressed his forehead to his knees.

The growling sound returned, accompanied by a low and booming thump. Leo jerked upright. The ripples in the water below his sneakers swelled; his reflection waxed into something unrecognizable.

"Leo…" Raphael called.

"Do you guys feel that?" Leo asked as another shaking thump slid him from the rock. "H-hey-!" he splashed to the water and immediately swam for the bank. Karai and Raph stood at the lip where grass met craggy earth and lifted him out by his arms.

Along and thin tail arched from the water.

Its skin was a teal blue and mottled with dark spots the color of a velvet, midnight sky.

The tail slipped back beneath the surface and Mikey screamed as the island quaked with another boom.

"Guys! There!" Donnie hissed, pointing a finger at the low rise of the creature's back breaking through the surface. What they could see of the Cthugga veered from the island's edge and out towards the center of the lake.

Leo bent for his bag and fumbled with wet hands for a disposable camera. He lifted one and powered it up. "This is our chance! C'mon!"

"Leo." Karai's voice was hesitant and wary.

When Leo looked up, he saw the Cthugga much closer than before. Its eyes on each side of its head seemed to glow. This close, he could see the lake monster had pale, paper-white lips curled around rows and rows of spike-like teeth that jutted out at every which angle.

He raised his camera and took a single _snap_.

The flash startled the creature as much as it startled each of them.

Loud, angry, the Cthugga roared and tossed its head left then right. It launched itself out of the water, straight for the five of them that stood slack-jawed on the overlook.

Its maw was open wide.

Leo felt his life-vest nearly choke him as Raphael grabbed the collar and yanked him behind. The disposable camera tumbled from his hands and into the dirt. Leo gasped in dismay, "The picture-!"

"Forget the picture! Just _run_ , you idiot!" he heard his brother yell and when the creature roared again, shaking loose a number of birds from the treetops, Leo didn't need to be told twice.

* * *

Donatello would have suggested they stay at a high point on Scuttlebutt Island until the lake monster conveniently forgot about them, but that became unfeasible when the Cthugga flopped across the trail and gave them chase.

So they ran.

They ran back down the route they had taken up and all the way back down to their motorboat. Once they had all jumped aboard, Karai started the engine with an urgent and hissing, "C'mon, c'mon!"

The motor sputtered to life. Karai tossed the wheel hard. Their boat listed, careening portside, as it backed away from the island. All four of her cousins stumbled sideways with a loud, "Whoa!" But then with a loud whine of the motor, the boat righted itself. They sped off.

"W-where should we go? What should we do?!" Donnie yelled. He had one hand on the handrail that lined the perimeter of the motorboat and the other hand clutched to the back of his head, ttrapping his fishing hat tight to his skull.

"Uh-!" Leo, sitting closer to the bow, bent to open the dry-compartment right of his seat. He shoved aside blankets and water bottles and ziploc baggies of IDs and yanked out the red journal he had found in the woods. Immediately, he flipped through the yellowed pages.

Raph stood with a wide stance near the aft where Karai kept a hand on the wheel. He braced himself against every lobbing jolt their boat took from cresting low wakes. He, too, had a hand on the top of his head, holding onto his hat. "Leo…!"

"It's back in the water!" Mikey shouted, bending over another one of the seats to point. "And it's gaining on us!"

"That book of yours better have something to help us!" Raph growled.

"Book? What book?" Karai squinted.

They zoomed by other idling boats, creating waves that rocked innocent fishing folk to and fro. They passed by the dock they had pushed out from and the convenience store where they bought their disposable cameras and sunscreen. They zipped down to the far end of the lake where it narrowed down to the town's namesake waterfall.

Leo gasped, sharp and high. Thumb pressed hard to the page, he turned in his seat and pointed to the waterfall. "There! Go straight for the falls!"

"What?" Karai screeched. "Are you _crazy_ , Leo?"

"Just trust me!" Leo shouted back over the growing roar of cascading water. "According to the book, there's a cave beyond it! We should be safe in there!"

Karai's amber eyes flitted between her cousin and the waterfall they were rapidly approaching. She glanced behind her to the curve of the Cthugga swimming after them, just barely breaking the surface of the lake. With a tight set to her jaw, Karai closed her eyes and screamed with her cousins as she pushed the boat to go as fast as it could.

The water fell hard over them the force of an oncoming semi-truck. The five sputtered and gasped for air, coughing up haggard mouthfuls. But they passed through and didn't collide with a cliff-face; instead they spun into a smaller pool in the center of a vast cavern. Their continued screams echoed off of rock walls and soon, Karai noticed they weren't the only ones crying out and shouting at the top of their lungs.

When she turned behind her, she brought the boat to a stop.

The Cthugga was caught, its wide head lodged in the cave's opening. It screamed as the water continued to pound against its back. With its frantic thrashing, it loosened pieces of rock and stalactites from the ceiling that crashed against its beak and the top of its head.

Karai sagged against the driver's seat.

"It...it's stuck! This is amazing!" Leo cried. He stood and reached for his bag of cameras, only to remember that he had left them behind on the island. In their haste to escape, he hadn't thought to grab it. "This is-oh-"

"-seventeen, Leo," Don hummed. He handed out one of the cameras taped to the inside of his life-vest, now unbuckled and lying loose around his chest. "We still have seventeen." He slid out another for himself.

Leo's grin widened. "Thanks, Don."

The beast kicked long enough for Donnie and Leo to snag several snapshots before a large stalactite crashed dead center on the Cthugga's head. With a spark, the brow of the creature dented and hissed. A sound not unlike that of a computer powering down wheezed from the monster as it fell still in the water. A small cloud of smoke puffed from the corner of the Cthugga's limp mouth.

Silence fell over the small motorboat.

Donatello frowned and was the first one to dive in and swim across.

* * *

The sun had just begun its descent across the sky as the four brothers and Karai sat at the end of the pier. Uncle Yoshi's motorboat floated a yard away, tied to a post.

Leonardo sighed. His shoulders sagged. "So all along it was Old Man Honeycutt, huh?"

Donatello, cheek propped up by his fist, nodded. He idly traced circles in the water with the stick he held. "Yep. Really, the man's an engineering genius. Apparently, this isn't the first robot he's created." He dropped his head against Leo's shoulder on his right. "But no, the Cthugga wasn't a real monster."

"The real monster was us," Karai sighed, kicking at the lakewater. "You were right, Don. My father just wanted to spend time with us. And we thought he wasn't worth it."

"Kinda like Old Man Honeycutt just wanted to spend time with his son," Mikey added.

Don set aside his stick and rubbed his arm with a tight frown.

"So much for the one thousand dollars," Raph mumbled, chin propped up in vee of both hands as he hunched over, looking at his shadowed reflection in the lakewater. He pressed his toes together and watched the front of his converse crease and uncrease, bend and unbend.

"Well, we still have all these disposable cameras left." Donnie sat upright and lifted his fishing hat. He pulled down the camera nestled in his dark hair and looked at the lens, still whole and unbroken, in spite of everything. "We haven't even begun to use fifteen of them. What should we do?"

Karai straightened and stretched out her back. She reached out her arms to the sky, then rotated from side to side, elbows angled outward. When she turned, she caught sight of a familiar car, patiently parked near the beachside. She blinked. A wide smile crossed her face.

"...well, you guys are here all summer, right?" She looked down to the four curious pairs of eyes that stared back up at her. "I think I've got just the idea."

* * *

Several silly and candid shots of fishing mishaps and improper knotting techniques were taken that day and a tired but patient Uncle Yoshi was present in all of them, with various members of his extended family accompanying him. And though he was stern, and his brows were always drawn forward, he looked happy, somehow. Or, as happy as they had seen him yet.

They took one final photo altogether just as the sun was setting at their backs: all six of them in Uncle Yoshi's motorboat, donning oversized life-vests, and cheesy, personalized, beige fishing hats.

And if it looked like Uncle Yoshi was actually smiling in that last one, no one said a word.

* * *

PIS NYWX AERXIH XS FI PMOI GETXEMR VCER, XLEX'W EPP.


	2. Ep 2: The Sun Caught in His Raven Hair

Raphael dove out of the way, dodging rocket-launched toy merchandise, and crashed into a pyramid of shipment packages. As the uppermost cardboard boxes toppled over, several insectoid plushies fell into his lap. Raph scrunched his nose and yanked his arm away.

"Cockroaches…!" he hissed.

"Your brother is _mine_!" Dregg shouted. His young, smooth face was tightened in anger; deep lines spread from his exaggerated dimples to his brow. He clenched the round peridot pendant of his bolo tight.

Raphael pushed himself to his feet. He readied his fists. When Dregg, standing in the center of the factory warehouse floor, seemed momentarily distracted with another doll made in his likeness, the boy leapt for him. Without looking, Dregg's hand shot into the air, fingers splayed.

Abruptly, Raphael couldn't move.

 _Pineapples!_

He was frozen, arm pulled back and lips parted in a silent cry. Held suspended by an unseen force, Raph fought against the powers that immobilized him. He flapped his mouth, found he could still talk, and then roared, "He's never gonna date you, man!"

"That's a _lie_!" Dregg tightened his hold on his tie.

A sliver of silver caught his eye, gleaming from the side: a work table that sat facing the adjacent wall, covered with hand-stitching tools. With a curled finger, Dregg telekinetically lifted the large scissors from the desk surface and snipped at the air once, then twice. He guided them toward his frozen captive. A wide and sinister smile stretched across his face. "And I'm going to make sure you can't lie to me or anyone else ever again."

Raph bared his teeth. The scissors drew close enough that he could see the faint outline of his reflection on the gleaming twin blades' side.

* * *

It started with the grand "re-opening" of Uncle Yoshi's wax museum.

Karai hated the whole thing, but she was there and present and manning the ticket table, which was as much as anyone could ask of her. Leo had also volunteered to help at the front, but when he could hear his uncle's deep and gravelly voice introduce the youngest of their quadruplets-"A word from our own Michelangelo…Michelangelo."-who had, amazingly enough, managed to craft a near-exact wax statue of their Uncle Yoshi, Leo began to get itchy. He craned his head this way and that, trying to see around his cousin while he overheard his smallest brother recognized for his rarely-explored artistic talents on the outdoor stage.

Karai rolled her eyes. She licked her index finger and continued counting with rapid-fire ease the dollar bills she cradled in the palm of her hand. "Just go see him, yeah? Our work's pretty much done here. Anybody else who straggles in this late, I can handle."

Leo's round eyes snapped to his cousin. His eyebrows lifted past the fringe of his dark bangs. "Really?"

"Really." Karai smiled and fanned the wad of cash at him. " _Go_ , you sap."

Leo grinned and leapt from his seat. He found an open spot to stand behind the last row of folding chairs and listened as Mikey answered his questions with enthusiasm. An odd sense of pride filled Leo's chest while watching his youngest brother; the kind that can only come from being an older brother, he knew, even though each of them were born just minutes apart. He crossed his arms over his chest.

A familiar balding man with a handlebar mustache sat close to the front. He timidly raised his hand and without hesitation, Mikey pointed to him. "Yes, sir?"

"I'm terribly sorry. I have an _awful_ memory," Old Man Honeycutt's accented voice babbled, tapping his fingertips against one another. "Who did that man say you were again?"

"Michelangelo."

"No, wait. I'm sorry. I mean, what's your name?"

"Michelangelo."

"Uh, wait. I'm sorry-"

A chuckle at his left drew Leo's attention. When he turned, he could see at his side a kid who looked about the same age as him, if not a year or two older. He had dyed silver hair, pulled back into a sporty topknot. When he turned to Leo, he revealed his autumnal eyes-the color of drifting, sun-dried leaves.

Leo could not recall having ever seen anyone so perfect in his life.

"I wonder if the boy's parents knew of his talent when they named him," the stranger was saying in a smooth and quiet voice, even-tempered like waves against sand. "Do you ever wonder about things like that?"

"He-hub-what?"

"Names have power, but they are not the determining factor in one's life. Anyone could be whatever they chose, no matter what their given name is."

" _I_ -uh-I have a name."

Usually, if Leo could have a penny for everytime he said something brainless, he would be a very poor man.

He decided in this rare instance, however, that unless he got his act together, he was about to become a very rich man very soon.

"I-! Oh boy. I mean-uh-"

The handsome stranger laughed, a light and joyful sound. Peculiarly raspy for so young a face, but somehow all the more delightful and pleasing to hear because of it. Leo's toes curled in his sneakers and he clasped his hands behind his back. He held his breath and felt his face burn hot.

"For that, I'm glad. What is it, if you'd like to tell me?" the stranger murmured. The corner of his mouth twitched upward in a smirk that made Leo's heart leap into sudden acrobatic feats of Olympic proportions.

"Uh-L-Leo. Leonardo. Leo, for short."

"Ah. Another unusual artist's name. Like our sculptor up there."

Was Mikey still on the stage? Leo wasn't aware of anything else in the world at that moment. Everything outside of this pale-haired stranger had become peripheral white noise. "Yeah," he swallowed. "That-he's my brother. Little brother."

"I think I see the resemblance. Are you two twins?"

"Quadruplets, actually." At the reminder that he had family in unknown places outside of this magical little bubble of perfect time and space, Leonardo jerked his eyes around to find them. A young woman in a navy blue tight-fitting suit dotted with teal orbs held a familiar blue sneaker in her hand and nodded to herself. "The other two are here somewhere."

"Are they also named after famous artists?"

"Italian ones," Leo smiled. "Mom was a big Renaissance fan."

"Wow, that is...different. But also, I think, kind of wonderful."

Leo's heart soared. It pushed upwards past the clouds, somewhere high and flighty and warm and he didn't think he ever wanted to come down from this feeling. "Yeah. It is," he said, though he had no idea what part of his mother having been a historical nerd was exactly 'wonderful.' But that someone _else_ thought so-a particularly _handsome_ someone else-was somehow the best thing that had ever happened to him.

The feeling stayed long after their conversation ended and the museum closed. In the fleeting few moments before the stranger was forced to depart the Mystery Shack with his older cousin, Leonardo was able to get his name.

He couldn't stop saying it since.

* * *

"Miyamoto Usagi," Leonardo whispered to the slanted attic ceiling. He flexed his hands behind his head and kicked his feet idly under the covers. "Miyamoto Usagi…"

Raph groaned, lying on his side with a pillow bent over his head. His bed was pressed against the wall left of Leo's; together, with Leo's bed perpendicular to his own against the north wall with the large window seat, their beds formed a right angle. " _What_ are you _sayin'_ over there?" he muttered. "You chantin' somethin' from that dumb journal of yours?"

"It's not a chant," Leo muttered. He slid his hands out from underneath his head and tapped his finger-tips against his stomach. "It's a name, Raph."

"Yeah, well, gesundheit."

Leo rolled his eyes. "You're being _rude_. His name's just different, that's all."

"Oh, _I'm_ being rude? I'm not the one keeping us up at odd hours-"

"-some people might even say _our_ names are really different and weird too, y'know-"

"-repeating over and over again the name of my new _boyfriend_."

Something in Leonardo's chest sharply lurched. He placed a hand over his heart. "Cut it out, Raph," he said, more quietly than before. He rolled to face the wall.

There was a long, stretching pause. All Leonardo could hear for several minutes was Mikey's quiet snoring from the other side of the room, where his and Donnie's beds mirrored the set-up of the two older quadruplets. He picked at a loose thread from the seam of his pillow cover; his lips curled into a thin frown.

"...tell me about him," Raph mumbled.

Leo stared at the wall for a moment more. Then, slowly, he turned onto his back again. He wondered where to start, but then realized he needn't have worried. Everything that had been building up all afternoon long was ready to tumble out; it only needed a door.

He recalled the conversation he had with Usagi to the best of his memory, cherishing each savored detail. He replayed in his mind's eye every twitch of Usagi's mouth: the way it broke open wide for a breathy laugh; the way it quirked sideways when he smiled.

"I think I like him," Leo whispered at the end, awash with the feelings that pressed up hard against his ribcage, threatening to burst him apart from the inside out.

"...like, _like-_ like him?" Raph muttered.

"Yeah."

"Leo. You just met the guy."

"Yeah, but you didn't _see_ him, Raph…"

"Don't need to. An hour or two shouldn't swing your heart, Leo."

Leo groaned and threw his forearms over his eyes. "I knew it," he sighed. "Talking to you is hopeless."

"Then, I don't know. Talk to Karai or somethin'."

"Karai?" Leo's heart stuttered hard. "But, Raph, then I'd have to tell her-"

"-you really think she wouldn't understand, Leo?" Raph's voice coming from his bed was matter-of-fact. Somehow patient, when usually his younger brother was far from it. "She introduced us to _Shinigami_ , man. If anything, she's gonna scream her head off because she's so happy."

Karai nearly did just that.

"No way! My own little gay _cousin_!" She enthused, kicking her feet out off the yellow couch and thrusting her hands into the air. Before Leo could move away, she wrapped him up in both of her arms and squeezed him tight. "I'm so proud! I _knew_ there was something special about you, Leo! Now we have so much more to talk about!"

"W-we do?" Leo wheezed.

Karai released him and brought her hands down hard upon his shoulders. "How did you know? You're so young!"

"I-I don't even think I really _know,_ uh, _anything_ , yet..."

"We gotta give you a look! Now that you know you're gay, it's like, _all plaid_ from here on out. You know that, right?" Karai said as if the matter was super serious and grave. "We're in a boondocks place in Oregon called _Gravity Falls_ , for crying out loud. If there's ever a time to embrace and live the gay, it's here."

"Is it? Is it really?" Leo asked with a skeptical frown.

Karai wouldn't be budged. That night, she persuaded Leo to try out his new 'gay aesthetic' with her and Shinigami. A grumbling and seemingly uninterested Raphael joined them and together, the four attended a tent magic show in town called the 'Dreggnought.' It had only been in Gravity Falls or a few weeks so far, but already-according to Karai-it was a complete hit.

"I heard about it from this commercial. It's super cute!" Shinigami had said. "'Are you completely miserable? Dread not! Come to the _Dreggnought_!'" She laughed and waved a hand. "Word plays are so adorable."

"Dad's not a fan of it because it's the 'competition,' but whatever." Karai had shrugged with a wicked smile. "As I always say, a little rebellion is good for the heart."

In the end, Leonardo hardly could recall a thing about the actual performance. It was flashy and bright and the star psychic of the show was a kid as young as he and Raphael. His red suit and pale lavender cape, not to mention his updone ebony hair, were perhaps the most eye-catching parts of his whole routine. His mind tricks, on the other hand, were easy to see through.

Raph kept reminding Leo how unimpressed he was throughout the show, while Karai and Shini took turns nudging Leo periodically to ask him if the random other boys his age they could see in the audience was his 'Usagi.' Leo didn't know how many times he had to say, "He's not _my_ Usagi!" but when his denials didn't help, he sunk lower and lower in his fold-up chair. He just wished he could disappear.

The combined efforts of both his bored younger brother and nosy older cousin and her girlfriend were perhaps the key reasons why Leo, on the walk home, realized he couldn't remember a single thing about the show itself.

 _Great. Now I have nothing to tell Mikey and Donnie about it._

He bowed his head, frowning. The sleeves of his borrowed, oversized plaid shirt were rolled up, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his too-tight jeans. He decided he wasn't sure how he felt about this new 'gay aesthetic' Karai had elbowed him into; even the gel in his hair felt itchy. He'd probably just go back to how he usually dressed.

By the respectful distance Karai was giving him, walking far behind and holding her girlfriend's hand, Leo suspected she might already know.

He kicked a loose rock ahead of his feet. Raph joined his side and kicked the rock back to him. A reluctant smile spread across Leo's face. Together, they kicked the same rock back and forth for the last leg of their walk home.

It wasn't until Karai sharply gasped that either younger cousin thought to look up.

And when Leo's eyes landed on the police car parked in front of the Mystery Shack, red and blue lights still spinning, his heart abruptly stopped.

* * *

Sheriff Steranko and Sheriff Zeck stood across from Uncle Yoshi, Donnie, and Mikey around the decapitated body of an unlikely murder victim lying prone on the dated shag living room carpet: Michelangelo's wax sculpture of Uncle Yoshi. Their gazes as they viewed the beheaded figure ranged from unimpressed to devastatingly heartbroken.

Leo could only express relief as he saw his other two brothers safe and unharmed. "When I saw the police car parked outside, I thought something much _worse_ had happened."

"Worse?!" Mikey exclaimed. "How can it be _worse_! Someone be-snitched-"

"-besmirched-"

"-whatever, Dee. They be-sni-smir-the point is, they ruined all my _hard work_!" Mikey huffed and crossed his arms over his chest and looked to the two sheriffs standing idly on the other side of the prone wax figure. Sheriff Zeck had a coffee in hand. "And _these two_ won't do anything about it!"

"Look, small boy," Sheriff Steranko began, his Russian accent heavy and thick, "it is like we already said. This case? It is unsolvable."

"Not to mention, that-no offense-but this just a piece o'art. No need to get in a hissie about any of it," Sheriff Zeck added. He waved his free hand at them. "I mean, can't you just like, resculpt the head? Then boom! Your problem is solved." He shook his head and took a long, slow sip of his latte. "Man, am I great at this job."

Don saw a disheartened shimmer in his little brother's eyes and that was all he needed to not let this matter go. "What do you _mean_ it's unsolvable?" he asked. "There's evidence, isn't there? A motive?"

"Dude, face the facts," Sheriff Zeck shrugged. He held out a hand placatingly. "The only motive here is just someone who's not a fan of your bro's work."

Mikey's lips pressed together into a crooked frown. The shine in his eyes brightened.

Don threw his fists down at his sides. "Ugh, you guys are _useless_."

"Hey now," Sheriff Zeck warned with a flat and raised hand, as if he were defending himself. "If you think you can do better than the grown-ups, kid. Then by all means…"

"Fine! If you won't solve it, then I _will_!"

There was a moment of stunned silence.

Then it was gone. Both Sheriff Zeck and Sheriff Steranko burst out laughing. Steranko laid a hand against his broad stomach. Zeck pointed a finger at the second-youngest quadruplet and crowed, "Oh! Oh, that's so _cute_. Look at 'im, Rocksteady! Look at 'im! Lil' _city boy_ here actually thinks he can solve a case!"

"That is-how you say-adorable!" Sheriff Steranko roared.

Don's face flushed from the top of his forehead to the bottom of his neck. His shoulders bunched and his fists tightened. "A- _adorable_?"

Mikey stepped in front of him. "You guys are laughing now, but just you wait! Don's really good! He's smart. _Real_ smart! He'll solve this case faster than either of you ever could!"

Sheriff Zeck was already rounding the prone wax figure on his way out of the house, Sheriff Steranko on his heels. Both of them squeezed past the gathered family both in the living room and trailing into the hallway, and lifted their hats in farewell.

"Yeah, whatever. Good luck, city boy," Sheriff Zeck called out with a chuckle. "Cuz you're sure gonna need it for this one."

Sheriff Steranko laughed and muttered something else-something that must have been another joke at their expense-but no one heard it. Shinigami shut the door behind them, and Don spun around to Mikey, both hands fisted in front of his chest. "That's _it._ Mikey, you and me are going to find the jerk who did this and get back that head." He punched the palm of one hand, dark brown eyes slipping up to stare at some unseen point. " _Then_ we'll see who's 'adorable.'"

Any lingering trace of hurt or worry immediately melted away from Mikey's face. The youngest of the four broke out into a wide smile. "Aw, yeah, _boi_! B-Team is at it again!" he cheered.

"...okay, don't...actually call us that."

Karai raised an eyebrow. She looked to Raphael, the closest brother to her out in the hallway overlooking the crowded living room space. "'B-Team'?"

"It's a long story," Raph muttered. He lifted a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug as Donnie and Mikey immediately got to work. They bent their heads together and animatedly talked, pouring over the headless wax figure on the floor. Uncle Yoshi wordlessly turned and moved for the kitchen.

"Mystery Twins?" Mikey piped up, tapping his chin.

"We're not twins, so no."

Mikey gasped. "Donnie, do you realize what this means? We could be like, some kind of _rodeo detectives_ -"

"-Mikey."

Well, one was focusing more than the other.

* * *

When Leo woke the next morning, he found Mikey and Don had already left. They headed into town bright and early after discovering a lead about a potential suspect, according to an ever-stiff Uncle Yoshi reading his newspaper and a half-awake Raphael munching aggressively on his breakfast flakes. At the news, Leo just shook his head and smiled. He reached into the cupboard and retrieved another cereal box. _I wonder how awake Mikey was when Don dragged him out of bed._

A knock sounded at the door.

Uncle Yoshi sent him a look over his newspaper pages that made Leo roll his eyes. He turned and left his empty bowl on the counter.

"Greetings."

The dark-haired kid on their front porch stood a few inches shorter than Leonardo himself. Up close, Leo could see his skin was so pale, he looked almost sickly.

Somehow, he seemed familiar.

"Hi," Leo answered. "Do I know you?"

The kid smirked and bowed extravagantly, one hand at his chest and the other stretched out. It was then Leo noticed the loose and gaping length of his lavender sleeves and all at once, last night's barely memorable performance came back to him.

"Oh! It's you! From the show," Leo smiled.

"Yes, it's me." The kid psychic named Dregg seemed especially pleased at Leo's recognition. "Vringath Dregg. I hope you enjoyed what you saw last night."

"Oh. Yeah." Leo cleared his throat. "It was certainly, uh, something."

"You must forgive my abrupt appearance; I know we haven't been formally introduced yet," Dregg continued and tapped the tips of his fingers together rhythmically, slowly. "But I confess, I was unable to wipe the memory of seeing you in the audience last night from my head."

"Oh." Leo laughed, a short and embarrassed sound. "Did I stand out that much?" _I'm going to kill Karai._

"Only in the best kind of way." Dregg's smile angled wide on his face. He reached up a hand to the bolo tie wrapped around his neck. At its center was a round, perfectly smooth, pale green gemstone. A peridot, if Leo had caught a proper glimpse of it. "It was as if I could sense a...kindred spirit. From afar."

"Oh. Oh boy," Leo chuckled. He sucked in air through his teeth. "Okay. Look, Dregg, I wasn't trying to-"

"-you, too, like the show _Space Heroes,_ don't you?"

"I...uh. Wait, what?"

* * *

Leo wasn't prepared for how easy it was to become friends with Dregg. When he looked past the weirdness of the kid's supposed-to-be-fake but also somehow-incredibly-accurate psychic abilities, Dregg was actually kind of fun to hang out with. A little nerdy, just like Leo was, and at times, kind of intimidating-"Leonardo, when I'm up here, looking down on all those tiny little people crawling up and down the street, I feel as if I were lord of all I survey..."-but he was a good kid, overall.

A mostly good kid.

"Leonardo."

"Yeah, Dregg?" Leo lifted his head from the town square below, overlooking the large road that bisected Gravity Falls. He and Dregg sat side-by-side on the top of the Dregg family's toy factory on 412 Gopher Road after an afternoon of marathoning _Space Heroes._ They had only known each other for two days, but already they were close to finishing season one. Leo couldn't believe how fast they were powerhousing through the episodes.

Summer was going to go by _so_ much more quickly now that he had someone to watch _Space Heroes_ with. No longer could his brothers and Karai tease him everytime he wanted control of Uncle Yoshi's ancient television set.

"To my memory," Dregg murmured, "I have never...ever felt so close to anyone. Not as close as I do to you at this very moment."

Suddenly Leo became very aware of how close their hands were on the beam of the roof's peak. He looked down at the short space in between their fingers and back up. "Yeah. Uh, I guess we're...pretty close." The boy cleared his throat.

Dregg reached a hand for Leonardo's cheek. Sharply, Leo brushed his hand away and scooted back.

"What's happening?" Leo asked.

"Give me one chance." Dregg's voice had taken on an unusual quality: something quiet and insistent and pleading, compounded by his bizarrely formal diction. "It is all I ask."

"Give you a-are you...are you asking me out on a _date_?"

"I-yes."

Leo stared at him. He stared at him for a long stretch of time. "Oh boy." He rubbed the back of his head and fumbled for words. "Uh. Okay. Look, Dregg, I like you and all, but just as a friend. Maybe that's what we should stay as."

"Give me just _one_ chance, Leonardo," Dregg repeated and the way he met Leo's eyes this time made it hard to look away. He was just so _earnest._ "One date, and you would make me the happiest boy in all the cosmos."

Leo didn't know what to say or do.

"You...really want to go out with _me_?" _Man, I'm kind of still figuring things out and here Dregg is, so confident and so assured in himself and what he wants._ He took a slow breath. "I mean…" _Is this how it works? Is it really this simple?_ "I...I guess? S-sure. If it's just one date."

"One date." Dregg's smile threatened to split his face. For an instant, it actually seemed terrifying, like his spread lips _had_ cut his pale face in two and then the boy was launching himself forward to wrap his arms around Leo and hug him tightly. "Ah, Leonardo, you have made me so very, very happy!"

"I…" Leo sat stiffly in his arms. "Okay!"

Later, Raphael would warn him against this.

Later, Leonardo would have to try to explain to his brother _why_ he had a "date" with someone who's a bigger fraud than Uncle Yoshi and all Raph would say was, "I don't know, Leo. Giving someone a pity-date ain't exactly the best way of telling them to leave you alone" and Leo would know he was right.

For now, Leo sat awkwardly in an unrelenting embrace of someone he had known for two days and tried to determine if that small _whiff-whiff_ sound he kept hearing was Dregg trying to sniff his hair or not.

* * *

"What is _Leonardo_ doing on the cover of the newspaper holding hands with the _competition_?"

It was perhaps the most Raphael had ever heard his uncle say in one breath. The man stormed from the living quarters and into the northern annex of the Mystery Shack that had long ago been converted into a gift store. Raph raised his head from lying against the check-out counter, and April O'Neil, the part-time help Yoshi had hired a year ago, lifted her head from her phone. With a faint flush, the redhead sharply stuffed her cell back into her pocket. Yoshi didn't seem to notice.

"Oh yeah, you didn't hear about it?" Karai, leaning on the other side of the check-out counter, held up her own phone screen and waved it from side to side. The e-gazette edition of the Gravity Falls newspaper gleamed from its surface. "It's all the current buzz right now. Leo and that kid psychic Dregg got a big _date_ tonight."

"Date?" Yoshi enunciated every consonant in the word. He looked back at the newspaper and something frustrated, something unsettled, crossed his twisted features. The pages crumpled in his hands. He tossed them down to the counter and turned. "I must settle this. _Now_."

"For the record, Uncle Yoshi, I didn't know about this!" Raph called after him. "I didn't hear anything, and besides, I told him _not_ to!"

When he received no response but the sound of the front door on the other side of the shack slamming shut, Raph looked to April. April shrugged.

A second later, Donnie and Mikey ran through the gift shop. Out the door of the living quarters they flew, across the general merchandise floor, and towards the door that lead outside.

"Hey. Where have you two been?" Raph narrowed eyes at them.

"Our murderer is left-handed!" Don cried over his shoulder. In his hand he held a pad of paper with a list of names and two sets of boxes at the end of each line. He reached the exit door and held it open for his younger brother. "My good man and gentleladies, we've finally found our break in the case!"

"Break in the case!" Mikey echoed as he ran outside with his fists in the air. Donnie followed on his heels. The door clanged shut behind them.

"...I'm sorry, did a couple of twelve-year-olds just say they were chasing down a _murderer_?" April asked the only brother left at the store.

Raphael sighed and dropped his chin to the store counter. He wondered why everyone else was seemingly getting an adventure and not him _._

* * *

Somewhere out across the town of Gravity Falls, a car pulled to a stop in front of an iron-wrought fence. Hamato Yoshi, dressed in a suit he normally reserved for press conferences, stepped out and marched up the walkway to the cauliflower blue front door of Dregg's estate. When he spied upon the door a cross-stitched sign that pleasantly read, 'Pardon this Garden' with a happy, buzzing bee sewn along the bottom, he growled.

"I will pardon _nothing_ ," he muttered and swiped the sign from the door.

He proceeded to demand an audience.

* * *

One date turned into several very quickly. Too quickly for Leo.

What was supposed to be just one night out for dinner turned into a second date dancing at the weekly open ballroom the following day. Ballroom dancing became a boat ride with an unexpected fireworks show on the river later that same night and Leo didn't know how to make it stop.

"That's it, Leo, right?" Raph pressured when he saw his older brother return to their attic late the second evening. His brother's steps were heavy and slow. "You'll never have to go out with him again. It's been _three dates_. That's like, three times more than what you agreed to. It's _over_."

Leo didn't answer. He just tossed his jacket onto the chest at the foot of his bed and ran his fingers through his hair and over his face. He fell back onto his mattress and bounced.

"Leo…"

"He asked me out again!" Leo burst and lifted his hands from his face. "I didn't know how to tell him _no_!"

"Like this." Raph rolled to sit upright on his bed and pointed with two fingers to either side of his mouth. "'No.'"

"It's not that easy, Raph." Leo sighed and let his hands fall over his face again.

"Sure it is! You just _say_ it."

The sound Leo made was soft and angry and a little bit sad. He rolled over onto his side, facing the wall. His body curled into itself. Silence followed.

"Leo?"

Leo shook his head. His short, dark hair that was splayed against his pillow waved with the motion.

Raph sighed. He dropped the comic book he had been reading when Leo first walked in and stood up. " _Leo_ ," he called again, more firmly.

"Leo's not here right now," Leo mumbled through his palms. "Leave him alone."

"See, you say that to _me,_ but why can't you say that to Dregg?"

"Because it's _different_. If I tell him no, I'll break his heart!"

"So?"

"So?" Leo repeated and he scoffed but the sound was tight and pained. He lifted his head to ground out over his shoulder: "I kind of actually _like_ being friends with him. I know that may be hard for you to believe, Raph, but I'm not like you. I don't actually _enjoy_ making enemies. I don't want to _be_ a 'bad guy.'"

Raphael frowned.

Leo sighed and laid his head back down against his pillow.

"Leo…" Raph didn't know how to finish. _Is that what you think of me?_ Or was he supposed to say: _You're never a 'bad guy' for standing up for yourself._

Instead he sighed and took the few steps he needed to cross the space between their perpendicular beds. He sat on the corner of Leo's mattress. "Fine. Enough is enough. If you can't break up with Dregg, then I'll break up with him _for_ you."

Leo slowly peeked out from behind his hands on his face. Shock colored his dark blue eyes. "You will?"

"Yeah," Raph grumbled. "I will."

The next thing Raph knew, he had his arms full of a grateful older brother, rambling over and over again into his shoulder, "Thank you, Raph…! You have no idea-just- _thank you_."

He cleared his throat and patted Leo on the back with his one free hand. The other was pinned to his side. "Don't mention it, Leo." _That's what brothers are for, I guess...to be the 'bad guy' when you need them to be._

* * *

When he heard heavy footfalls that were nothing like the graceful and rhythmic ones of his Leonardo, Vringrath Dregg supposed he had always known that one of the boy's many brothers would finally step in the way of his plans. First, it had been their uncle with that horridly ugly face-a man who Dregg's father could only make complacent with the words, "It is Leonardo's choice as to whether or not he agrees to be courted. It is not yours." And now, there was one of the other quadruplets, just concerned for his brother's wellbeing.

He supposed he would have to deal with him like he's dealt with everything else.

Dregg lowered his dinner menu to the table and slid a surprised smile on his face. "Raphael Tang. How good to see you."

"Dregg," the younger brother of his Leonardo grumbled. Ah yes, the ever-uncouth one.

"Is there something I can help you with?" Dregg continued pleasantly. "I was hoping to see your brother soon, you know. He's late, but that's quite all right. I am...patient."

"Yeah, 'bout that," Raph began and Dregg folded his hands tightly over the white tablecloth. The boy freed his own hands from his pockets and crossed his arms over his chest. "Look, Dregg. Whatever's between you and Leo...it's gotta stop. Leo doesn't actually _want_ this. He's not 'late.' He's just not coming tonight."

Something sharp cut right down through Dregg's center. An eye twitched. He fought the tension that grew in his shoulders. "I...apologize. I'm not quite certain what you mean."

The brute rolled his eyes, a dark color with flecks of green. "Yeah. You do. You just don't want to accept it and _that's_ what your problem is." Raph pinned Dregg with an unyielding stare as he added, "Leave Leo alone."

Dregg placed his hands flat against the table. He breathed long and thin; his eyelids slipped closed and then open again in an exaggerated blink. "So does this mean you're...coming _between_ us, Raphael?"

"You know what? Yeah," Raph growled and leaned low over the table. "I guess I am."

The second-oldest quadruplet pushed himself off, turned, and marched away with the same kind of heavy footfalls with which he had entered. Dregg watched him leave. The frown on his face stretched and deepened. He set his teeth.

It appeared he was mistaken. He would handle _this_ one in a way _very_ different than how he's dealt with everything else.

* * *

Leo jerked upright when he heard familiar footsteps stomping up the stairs. He threw his legs over the side of his bed, hands wringing under the blanket he pulled around his shoulders. As soon as he saw his younger brother stepping through the door, he blurted, "How did it go? Was he all right with it? He didn't try to...I don't know, _do_ anything to you with his psychic powers, did he?"

Raph rolled his eyes and walked straight to his bed. He fell back on it with all the carefree, spread-eagled grace of a ragdoll. "He doesn't _have_ any powers, Leo. It was fine. We're cool, now."

"So he'll leave me alone?"

That made Raph look up to him. "He _better_ ," he muttered dangerously and Leo smiled.

* * *

The next day, Mikey and Don were out again solving their murder investigation, and Uncle Yoshi had taken Karai into town to buy groceries. April O'Neil, then, was left in charge of the gift shop and two of the quadruplets, and when the traffic of customers were slow, she, Leo, and Raph picked up some of the store items to play with, giggling as they occasionally fake-stabbed each other with painted kaleidoscope tins and Chinese finger traps.

"Oh, you got me!" April bemoaned, clutching her side. She sagged dramatically against the check-out counter and Leonardo as he stepped away.

"The ninja master wins again!" he cheered.

The household phone rang. Immediately, Leo and Raph looked to one another from different sides of the souvenir shop.

"Not it!"

"Not-ugh."

Raph rolled his eyes. He climbed down from his 'fortress' of unpacked merchandise in the corner and slunked for the living quarters of the Mystery Shack. He lifted the phone on the kitchen wall to his ear and rehearsed flatly, "Hamato residence. Raphael Tang speaking."

He blinked when he heard the voice on the other end. "Wait, what, are you serious? What happened?"

He paused, then groaned. He pinched the bridge of his nose and wondered why he had to have such a little brother like _Mikey_. "Yeah, all right. I'll be there in a second. Thanks for watching over him." Pause. "Yeah, uh-huh. 412 Gopher Road?" He reached for an old receipt and flipped it over to scribble the address on the back. "Got it. Thanks."

He hung up and walked back out through the gift shop. When Leo heard what had happened and offered to go with him, Raph waved him off and said he would be fine. He was going to wring Michelangelo's neck himself for this mess.

* * *

In retrospect, he supposed he should have known that with _Donatello_ with him, Michelangelo would never have done something as stupid as what the phone call had told him he did.

When Raph entered the toy factory on 412 Gopher Road, he wasn't met with his little brother or his supposed Good Samaritan caretaker. Instead he saw a boy about as old as himself, with long, extravagant lavender sleeves and an expensive hairdo that must have cost the kid hundreds, sitting in the center of the warehouse floor.

"Dregg," Raph groaned.

"Greetings, Raphael," Dregg muttered, idly playing with a stuffed hornet. He sat perched on a tall-backed swivel office chair.

"What do you want, man?"

"How long have you and your brothers been in this town, hmm? A week? Maybe more?" Dregg asked instead of answering. He had yet to look at Raph, his eyes still nonchalantly fixed on the hornet between his knees. "Have you been enjoying your time here in Gravity Falls?"

"Can we skip to the part we both know this is really about?" Raph fired back.

Dregg's gaze finally snapped up, pinning Raph with his gaze. "Listen carefully, boy, when I say this: there are things in this town that are beyond your comprehension. Your little, insignificant mind couldn't even _begin_ to understand it all."

"Oh yeah? _Try_ me."

The next thing Raph knew, he was being flung against the wall. Hard. Dregg hadn't moved; he hadn't gotten up to shove at him or touch him in any way. And yet, it was as if someone had taken hold of Raph's body like he was one of the cheap toys inside the factory and chucked him. He gasped and struggled against thin air, but couldn't move.

"W-what the-"

"Now," Dregg murmured in a strange and filmy tone, like he was speaking through a thin stretch of fabric. The vibrations of his voice were louder than his words. He slid from his chair, his hand wrapped around the peridot center of his bolo tie. "I agree. Let us 'skip to the part' where you pay for turning my dear Leonardo against me. Where you learn, Raphael, exactly what happens to people when they try to stop me from getting what I deserve."

"How…?" Raph gasped and pushed harder against the invisible force keeping him pinned. He couldn't move. "You're a _fake_!"

"Things you couldn't even begin to understand, Raphael," Dregg reminded in a lilting sing-song. The horrific, wide spread of his smile seemed to split his face in two.

* * *

"Karai?"

"Mm?"

"Can I help put away groceries?"

"Sure. That'd be great. Thanks."

"...hey, Karai?"

"Yeah, Leo?"

"Have you ever...broken up with someone before?"

Karai put down the plastic bag of yogurts and cheeses. She looked to her cousin standing next to the round dining table loaded with food. He didn't look back. The boy kept his eyes on the bag he was sifting through; his fingers toyed with the edge of a fruit snack box.

"Well, _yeah_ ," she answered. "A lot of people."

Leo nodded.

Karai smiled, a soft and secret one she saved for the rarest of occasions: the times when she could tell she needed to put on her 'big sister' cap. She turned for the refrigerator and propped the door open with her hip. She hummed. "But this isn't about me, is it? This is about Dregg."

Finally, Leo's gaze snapped to her. His eyes were wide. "You _knew_ about us?"

"Kind of everybody did, kid," she answered. "But that's not the point. I had a feeling you two weren't a great match."

The sigh that slid from her cousin's lungs moved his small chest. Leo padded over to the chair on the opposite side of the dining table and plopped onto it. His shoulders slumped forward. "Yeah. It kind of sucks."

"Was he your first boyfriend?"

Leo's brow folded. His fingers played with a button on his sleeve. With a paper white press of his lips, he nodded.

"Kind of makes it feel worse, doesn't it?" Karai murmured. She let the refrigerator door swing shut and crumbled up the plastic bag left in her hands."Why'd you even go out with him, Leo? It's not like you've ever talked about him before. Not as much as you've talked about this mysterious Usagi who I have yet to meet, anyway."

"I don't know," Leo whined. His head fell against the table between the lettuce and potatoes. "He was my _friend_. I liked watching _Space Heroes_ with him."

"That doesn't mean you have to _date_ him." Karai picked up the box of fruit snacks Leo had been toying with earlier. She tore it open and tossed a small pouch to the side of his head. Leo winced and picked it up.

"Yeah, I know that now," Leo murmured. "I just...I kind of felt like I did everything wrong." He sighed and popped a misshapen Captain Ryan into his mouth. "I picked the wrong first boyfriend. I didn't have a great first date with first said boyfriend. Man, I even had Raph break up with him _for_ me because I was too much of a coward to tell Dregg to his face that I never actually really wanted to go _out_ with him, I was just scared of hurting his feelings."

Karai reached over to grab the lettuce. With her free hand, she combed her fingers through Leo's short hair. "That's not the only thing though, is it?"

Leo frowned deeply. "Karai, I don't even know if Usagi will like me back," he said quietly. "When Dregg asked me out, it got me thinking: what are the chances that the guy _I_ like would even like other guys? Here I am waiting for the perfect somebody but what if he's waiting for the perfect _girl_? Maybe...I was wasting my time just waiting."

The refrigerator door swung shut. Karai rounded the table to sit in the chair beside her cousin. "Leo, this is going to be the _last_ thing you want to hear, but…" She gently flicked the side of Leo's head. "...kid, you're _twelve._ "

"Ow," Leo whined and rubbed his head.

"You've got _time_. Don't be so mellow. Yeah, maybe your first boyfriend ever wasn't the greatest choice. Maybe you've an awful couple of dates with him. But that _happens_. You'll have a gazillion more mistakes, sprinkled in with some really great dates and really awesome boyfriends, and that's _life_. You kinda have to mess things up once in a while to know when the good and keepable people come by you."

Leo raised his eyes to his cousin. "Like Shinigami?"

Karai's smile turned soft and fond. "Yeah. Kinda like Shini." She cleared her throat. "Anyway. You want to know what else I think?"

"Do I dare ask?" The corner of Leo's mouth twitched up.

She pressed a finger into his forehead and then stood to grab the last bag on the table. "Break up with Dregg yourself. You'll feel a whole lot better if you do."

Leo thought for a moment. When he nodded, he set his mouth in a firm line. "Yeah. I guess you're right."

"I always am."

"Oh, _please_." Leo rolled his eyes hard but smiled. He waved a hand as he stood and passed by his cousin out the kitchen. "Hey. Thanks, Karai."

"Don't mention it, Leo. I'll have the ice cream out and ready when you get back."

* * *

Raphael dove out of the way, dodging rocket-launched toy merchandise, and crashed into a pyramid of shipment packages. As the uppermost cardboard boxes toppled over, several insectoid plushies fell into his lap. Raph scrunched his nose and yanked his arm away.

"Cockroaches…!" he hissed.

"Your brother is _mine_!" Dregg shouted. His young, smooth face was tightened in anger; deep lines spread from his exaggerated dimples to his brow. He clenched the round peridot pendant of his bolo tight.

Raphael pushed himself to his feet. He readied his fists. When Dregg, standing in the center of the factory warehouse floor, seemed momentarily distracted with another doll made in his likeness, the boy leapt for him. Without looking, Dregg's hand shot into the air, fingers splayed.

Abruptly, Raphael couldn't move.

 _Pineapples!_

He was frozen, arm pulled back and lips parted in a silent cry. Held suspended by an unseen force, Raph fought against the powers that immobilized him. He flapped his mouth, found he could still talk, and then roared, "He's never gonna date you, man!"

"That's a _lie_!" Dregg tightened his hold on his tie.

A sliver of silver caught his eye, gleaming from the side: a work table that sat facing the adjacent wall, covered with hand-stitching tools. With a curled finger, Dregg telekinetically lifted the large scissors from the desk surface and snipped at the air once, then twice. He guided them toward his frozen captive. A wide and sinister smile stretched across his face. "And I'm going to make sure you can't lie to me or anyone else ever again."

Raph bared his teeth. The scissors drew close enough that he could see the faint outline of his reflection on the gleaming twin blades' side.

* * *

All of a sudden, the double doors at the far end of the warehouse slammed open wide.

"Dregg!" called Leonardo's voice. "We need to talk."

* * *

Leo's arrival was as jarring to Dregg as it was to Raph. As soon as the kid heard the oldest quadruplet's voice, Dregg spun on his heel. His bug-like eyes were wide.

Raph couldn't move when his brother stepped forward. If he didn't see the flicker of Leo's eyes towards him as he floated suspended with a pair of scissors just millimeters from his open mouth, he would have thought, from the way Leo was talking about not dating and just being _Space Heroes_ buddies, that Leo wasn't aware of the danger he himself was in at all. _Uh, hello? Earth to Leo? Need a little help, here?_

But then the scissors clattered to the floor and even though Raph still couldn't move, he could breathe a sigh of relief.

Then it became very hard to breathe.

"I'm afraid I don't understand, Leonardo," Dregg asked. "I thought you _liked_ our dates."

"Leo!" Raph gasped. "Maybe now's not the...best time to be...brutally honest with him!"

"It was, uh-" Leo's eyes darted to his brother once. "-thoughtful. They were very thoughtful. But listen, Dregg. I've gotta tell you..." He held out his hands and slowly, carefully, Dregg slid his own palms away from the peridot against his throat. He laid them over Leo's.

There was a split-second of teetering silence and then Leo snatched the bolo tie free from Dregg's neck with a twisting _yank_.

"I can't _believe_ you!" he shouted. Raph fell to the floor with horrid, choking heaves of air. Leo shook the bolo tie in Dregg's face and there was no fear now. No hesitation. Everything buried deep within the boy now had a door and it was gaping open wide. "I tell you I don't want to date you, and you attack my _brother_?! What the-"

"-my tie! L-Leonardo, my dear Leonardo, I can explain-"

"-no, you don't get to explain!" Leo cried. "I'm done listening to you, when you've _never_ ever listened to me or my brother. We're _finished_!"

With that, Leo threw the bolo tie to the floor and raised a foot. He stomped the peridot gem of it once, twice, and Dregg screamed as it shattered into thousands of glittering pieces. A ghostly pale and ethereal essence wafted from the remains of the broken stone. Within moments, the apparition dissipated into nothing.

Dregg dropped to his knees with a mournful cry. "My powers…!"

Raph scoffed from where he kneeled on the floor. He held a hand to his ragged throat. "Not so tough now, are you?" he rasped.

Dregg's head spun around to glower at the younger brother. He opened his mouth to sneer a remark, but Leo's shadow fell over him. When Dregg looked up, the look on the boy's face was dark. Dangerous.

"Go," Leonardo threatened, "I don't ever want to see your face ever again."

Dregg scurried away. The moment he was gone, Leo hurried to his brother's side. He wrapped him tight in his arms.

* * *

As soon as they could, Raphael and Leonardo slumped against the old and stained yellow couch in their uncle's living room. Karai was on the phone in the kitchen and when she came back a minute later, she had tucked in both arms three bowls of ice cream.

"So, uh, that was Dregg," Karai said. She handed each of them a bowl and sat down on the giant replica of a dinosaur's head next to the sofa. She crossed one leg over the other and lifted a spoonful of rocky road into her mouth. "Apparently, he's declaring 'vengeance' on the whole family, now. That's fun."

"So much for not being the 'bad guy' and not making enemies," Raph muttered. He sighed and sunk lower in the chair. Both of his hands cradled his chilled bowl. "Sorry, Leo."

"I'm not." There was a small smile on Leo's mouth. He hummed and took a bite of ice cream. He waved his spoon in the air like he was drawing clouds. "It felt good to yell at him after everything, actually. Kinda therapeutic."

Karai snickered. "Yeah, well. Guess we'll have to watch your toes or something. He might try to nibble on them from now on."

Raph laughed. "Yeah. Yeah!" He turned, crooking one leg next to him on the couch as he looked at his brother. "How's he gonna destroy us now, Leo? Gonna try to guess what-what number we're thinking of or something?"

"Ooooooooo," Leo wobbled his voice around chuckles and wriggled his fingers. "So _spooky._ "

Karai busted out laughing. "You guys-"

"-you guys! You won't believe it! Donnie solved the case!"

Mikey tore threw the living room so fast that when he skidded to a stop, there might have been skid marks on the shag carpet. He stepped in front of his brothers and cousin, his hands proudly fisted against either side of his waist.

"Ew! Oh my gosh, Mikey, what _is_ that?"

"Are you...are you covered in... _wax_?"

"It was amazing!" Mikey crowed. Donatello and Uncle Yoshi, carrying his decapitated wax head, strolled in from the hallway. "All of Uncle Yoshi's wax figures turned out to be evil! _They're_ the ones who were trying to kill Uncle Yoshi but they killed his replica instead, so we fought them to the death!"

Leo wasn't sure what he was hearing was the truth or the result of an overactive imagination. With Mikey, it was hard to tell.

He turned to the other quadruplet also covered in splotches of what looked like melted wax and asked, "Don…?"

"I decapitated Michael Bay."

Karai's eyes drifted up to her father. "...Dad…?"

Her father shrugged, muttering under his breath, "Kids." He strode forward and set his head lookalike on top of the television set. Without breaking his pace, he moved for the kitchen. They heard the refrigerator door open a moment later.

"...wow. What a week," Raphael finally decided.

"Yeah," Leo nodded, bewildered. He leaned back against the couch. "What a week."

* * *

Somewhere out across the town of Gravity Falls, beyond a cauliflower blue front door and up a freshly-stained wooden stairway, a disgruntled young boy hunkered over his desk in his bedroom and flipped through a red and dusty journal. He no longer had his precious green amulet, but that would not be an issue. There were thousands of other options for him littered throughout these yellowed pages. Hundreds of other opportunities to take advantage of, all drafted inside of this golden flower-faced book engraved with a large '2.'

He just needed _one_ to get his revenge.

* * *

MJ CSY XLSYKLX M AEWR'X KSMRK XS VIJIVIRGI HMWRIC'W XLI LYRGLFEGO SJ RSXVI HEQI ALIR XSRC NEC ZSMGIH FSXL GPEYHI JVSPPS ERH PSVH HVIKK JVSQ XLI GPEWWMG XQRX GEVXSSR, CSY AIVI QMWXEOIR.


	3. Ep 3: The Snow Goose Need Not Bathe

**Crystal's Notes:** Sorry for the long delay. Was on vacation; you know how it is.

Keeping pace with the show, we'll say goodbye to old "Mr. Caesarian" after this chapter. Mr. Atbash will be "substituting" for a while next.

Extra kudos to those who are spotting all my ciphers and who have kudos'd and commented so far. The traffic isn't that great for this fic (which is fine), but for those who have left notes or likes, sincerely, thanks. You're the best.

* * *

Uncle Yoshi stood in front of the line of his family members and part-time help as he assigned jobs for the evening. Karai had begged to be the DJ-to which her father didn't really have a reason to say no-and Raph and Leo were in charge of making sure the food table was stocked throughout the night. April and Mikey were to man the ticket table-that is, until Mikey complained and begged to be part of the actual party itself.

At least no one could say Don didn't know when to spy an opportunity.

" _I_ could help April, Uncle Yoshi." He raised a hand.

Uncle Yoshi's mouth veered downwards. "You realize you must commit," he rumbled. "You cannot leave. It will be just the two of you at the ticket stand. All. Night."

Don snuck a glance at April out of the corner of his eyes. He saw the way her red hair glimmered under the multi-colored party lights, the way glitter still stuck to her skin from when they were playing with the decorations earlier. He folded his hands behind his back and smiled and looked to his uncle. "I think that'll be just fine."

* * *

The thing was: Donnie's crush on April didn't happen overnight. At least, as long as you didn't ask Mikey, it didn't.

There was the incident with the haunted convenience store-which _totally_ wouldn't have happened if Don hadn't been trying to impress April and her friends-but also was difficult to ascertain the exact events of. Raph hadn't been there, so he didn't know what had gone on. He was busy "so _not_ getting into" this Jane Austenian period drama back at the Mystery Shack. Mikey was no help getting information either because even though he _was_ there, he had been gorging himself on banned powdered-dip candy pouches and everything he could recall about that night contained pizza growing on trees in a crayon-colored cardboard world where he had a giant ice cream kitty as a pet.

Then there was Casey and Irma, April's friends. Neither of them Leo knew very well, but even when he asked all they would say was, "I don't know, man. It was such a crazy night!"

Leo himself had been gone all day somewhere he was not about to tell anyone else (it involved an adventure with bipedal talking triceratops, a shockingly sensitive creature called a spasmosaur, and his own crippling self-doubt and that wasn't something he wasn't willing to share anytime soon), so he couldn't tell what had happened or how something had changed in the dynamic between his younger brother and the Mystery Shack's charming part-time help. He only noticed that it did.

But then he and Donnie were tasked with making copies of flyers for the party Uncle Yoshi wanted to throw to revitalize younger interest in the Mystery Shack. They had found their uncle's crumbling xerox machine in his office, tried to make the copies so they could leave, but instead, through sheer accident, managed to make an incredible find.

"...Leo...I think this machine can copy _humans_."

And Leo saw something he wasn't unused to seeing in his younger brother: the gears in his head beginning to turn.

* * *

"What was _that_ about, Don?" Raph laughed as he watched his brother prep himself in the mirror just a half hour before the party was set to start. "'Oh, _I_ can work with April, Uncle Yoshi. _I_ promise to stay with her, just the two of us, all night'-were you _trying_ to be subtle?"

"Laugh all you want, Raph," Don said as he ran a comb through his long and slender ponytail one last time. "I've got the best plan to make sure my night with April goes perfectly!" He set down his comb and observed his dark hair as it fell in a straight line down his back. Satisfied, he clicked his tongue appreciatively at his reflection.

Mikey, lying on his stomach across the fluffy blue rug in the attic, groaned. "'Plan?' This isn't one of your over-complicated listy thingies, Dee, is it?"

"Uh, _no,_ " their genius of a brother huffed. He turned, reached into his pocket, and mumbled, "Let me just...show you guys- _ah-ha._ "

The small paper Don unfolded fell open into a sheet almost as tall as he was.

"Step one," he read with a wide, proud smile. "Get to know April with playful, light hearted banter." He lifted his head from the paper to look pointedly at Mikey. "Banter is like talking, but smarter."

"This sounds like a dumb idea for poop-heads," his younger brother mumbled.

"Yeah, see, this isn't banter. This is what I want to avoid doing with April."

"How many 'steps' are there, Dee?" Leo asked. A frown was beginning to stretch across his face.

"Eleven," Donnie smiled. "And if I follow them all, the _last_ step will be to ask her to dance with me! See? It's perfect! Nothing can get in my way!"

"I dunno, Don," Raph hummed from his bed. He had a comic book spread across his lap and idly flipped to the next page as he said, "Sounds like _you're_ the one getting in your own way. Can't you just talk to 'er like you'd talk to anyone else?"

"Oh, big brother of little faith. That's all part of the plan! Step nine, to be exact!" Donnie pointed to a spot further down on his list.

Mikey groaned, unimpressed.

* * *

The party started with a moderate size that grew exponentially by the time it was just fifteen minutes underway.

While Donatello sat next to April and tried to speak around the continual nervous breaks in his voice, Michelangelo stood in the middle of the dance floor and brought the party to life. He moved and snapped his fingers and kicked his feet to the music Karai jammed on the loudspeakers.

When he finally shuffled over to the plastic chairs against the wall to grab his water bottle, he didn't notice until he sat down what looked like a baby alligator sitting on top of the short, buzzed haircut of the kid next to him.

Instantly, Mikey gasped. "Whoa! Is that an alligator on your _head_?"

The kid turned. He was broad-shouldered and umber brown-skinned; muscular for his age, tall with a square jaw. His hands looked like he could punch out even _Uncle Yoshi_ with one hit. But there was a nervous curl to the corner of his mouth and a softness to the amber yellow of his eyes. In the two seconds since he had seen him, Mikey was enamored.

"I'm Michelangelo!" he breathed, placing a hand to his chest.

"It is nice to make your...acquaintance," the kid answered. His voice was deep and gravelly, with a parched rasp to it. "I am Lester. This is Jason." He gestured with his hand to another kid next to him, someone so small and slight that Mikey hadn't even seen him behind his much larger friend.

"Hi!" Jason greeted, waving a hand with a cheesy smile. His long blonde hair was covered with a backwards baseball cap. Freckles dotted the cheeks and nose of his face. "Nice to meetcha!"

"Ditto!" Mikey scrunched up his nose and giggled. "Dude. I gotta ask: why do you have _tape_ all over your head?"

"Watch and learn, dude," Jason answered and stuck his face in the bowl of popcorn Lester held in his lap. When he pulled himself back up, there were several small kernels of popcorn stuck to each strip of tape across his cheeks and forehead.

Mikey's eyes widened with a bright gasp.

 _I have found my people._

A tap from the microphone at the DJ booth drew their attention to the corner stage. Karai cleared her throat. "Good evening!" she called with a wide smirk. "And welcome to the Party at the Mystery Shack! Don't forget that tonight, you guys could compete for the chance to win the Party Crown!" She held up a small crown. For as much as it was obviously made of plastic, the fake rubies on the ridges gleamed in the spotlights. "Whoever gets the most applause at the end of the night wins!"

Mikey clapped his hands to his cheeks. "I _love_ tiaras…!"

Lester made a noise in the back of his throat. "That may be, but I would not get your hopes up for winning, Michelangelo."

"Huh? Why not?"

The kid gestured his chin towards the corner stage. When Mikey turned his head to look, Karai was joined by a young boy standing before her. He had short brown hair straightened into a bob around his face. He held himself with practiced poise, as if he was trained in a sport or perhaps ballet.

Mikey listened as the boy demanded Karai give him the crown. Some of the kid's henchmen around him chuckled when she tried to say that no, that he would have to wait until the end of the party to see if he won it fair and square.

"As if he'll have _competition_ ," a deeply tanned one with a Brazilian accent said.

"Who's that?" Mikey asked. He turned back to the two kids still sitting beside him.

"Chris Bradford," Jason murmured with a pouting frown. "The most popular kid in all of Gravity Falls."

Lester gave a heavy sigh. "He is ruthless to all of his peers-except those who his parents favor."

"But most of the time, he's just a big bully to us."

Lester hummed in agreement and Mikey's heart broke.

"As I _said_ ," Karai muttered to the smug brunet on the other side of her DJ set-up. "It's a _competition_. You get it when you win."

"Oh yeah? Well, come on now, let's be real: who's honestly going to try to compete against _me_?"

"I will!"

Mikey jumped to the kid name Chris Bradford's side, beaming. He waved at Karai, who seemed just as startled as Chris at his arrival. She recovered and waved back, so he stuck out his hand to Chris. "Hi. I'm Michelangelo!"

Chris laughed and pulled away. "What? That sounds like some ancient old guy's name."

"Well, you're not wrong!" Mikey swung his arm in good cheer.

Chris hesitated. For a moment, he had a stricken, deer-in-the-headlights look in the pale blue of his eyes, like he hadn't expected for Mikey to actually agree with him. Then, he regained whatever footing he had lost. He rolled his eyes. "All right, fine. Whatever, _Michelangelo._ May the best party dude win."

"You're on, man!" Mikey exclaimed. He watched as Chris Bradford turned away and melted into the sea of dancing people. When he and his posse had disappeared, he turned to Lester and Jason, who sat watching him with slack-jawed expressions of awe.

"He's going down." He shrugged.

"Let the battle for the Party Crown commence!"

* * *

When the party _truly_ got in full-swing, April began to get antsy. She kept looking over her shoulder, sneaking glances through the window over their table. She would gasp and shove Donnie's shoulder-much to his blushing glee-and say, "Oh! I think they're playing 'Cha-Cha Slide _._ ' Look at your little brother go!" or "'Funky Town!' That one's so old, haha! I've _got_ to tease Karai about that!"

Don nodded and continually stuffed popcorn in his mouth. This was fine. It was all fine. He just needed more time to try and think of a better casual banter question. That's all.

But then, when the line finally died down, April made a sharp noise of excitement and wriggled in her fold-up chair. She jumped to her feet. "'Cupid Shuffle'-oh, Don, I _have_ to get in there. Cover for me, won't you?"

It happened so fast, Don couldn't say a single thing.

"Wha-April-I-uh-!"

Then, she was gone.

And like clockwork, as if he had been waiting for one of them to crack, Uncle Yoshi appeared. His mouth was turned sternly downward as he asked, "Where is April?"

Don fretted. "Uh-bathroom! She's in the bathroom, Uncle Yoshi."

The renowned Man of Mystery nodded, slow and thoughtful. "I see." His dark eyes turned to spy the lack of a line, then wandered towards the party he could see well underway beyond the window. "I suppose...there may be little point in her returning to maintain the entry table for the remainder of the evening."

Don's heart skipped a beat in his chest. "Could-could I be relieved, too-"

"-no."

Uncle Yoshi turned for the front door.

Don spluttered. He placed both hands on the table and pushed himself to his feet. "But Uncle Yoshi! I want to have fun, too!"

"Then you shouldn't have volunteered to help with the tickets," he rumbled. But when the man stood before the door, he stopped. He gave a small sigh. Uncle Yoshi lifted his wristwatch to his face and frowned further. "...it is ten o'clock. You will stay for two more hours. Then you may join."

Don dropped himself into his seat with a dejected sigh. He propped up his chin in the curve of his palm and listened as the front door clanged shut after his uncle. "It's not _fair_ ," he whined to the night sky.

Frowning big time, Donnie turned in his seat to look through the window.

"Now April's in _there_ , and I'm stuck out _here_. How can I get the chance to ask her to dance if I can't even get into the party?"

If only he could be in two places at onc-

His eyes caught sight of the flyers he and Leo had copied earlier that day.

 _Yeah_ , he thought. _If only…_

* * *

The world whirred, clicked, and was inked into existence. Flutter, flutter, drop. Everything blurred of cyan, magenta, and yellow. With a clean separation from his paper bindings, the second Donatello pushed himself up from the wooden floorboards under his hands. The first touch he recognized was the slither of his long hair spilling over his back. He looked up to the boxy device of clinical white and gray that appeared as if it had seen much better days and met eyes with the identical wide browns of the boy sitting on top of it.

"Wow," his original said. "It really _does_ look like me. Incredible!"

"Ouch. 'It' is hardly fair here, don't you think?" he muttered and pushed himself to his feet. He raised a hand to dust off his shoulders.

"You can _talk!_ " the first Don gasped and he slid from the copier. Both of his hands hovered, as if unsure whether to touch or to keep them far away. "Oh! You're right. Geez, I'm sorry. I just-you're my first-uh-" His original cleared his throat. "-well, all right, then. I guess I can call you Number Two?"

He laughed and placed his hands against his waist. "Oh, absolutely _not_. But you know what name you've always wanted, right?"

Don brightened and as one, they said, "Niccolo!"

The original Donatello laughed again. He pumped his fist. "All _right_! This is so _cool_! Okay. Okay! Niccolo it is." He dug into his pocket and fished out his folded paper. "So, Niccolo, do you know the plan for the evening?"

"Sure do!" Niccolo answered and like a delayed mirror, he reached into his pocket and folded out an exact paper replica of the plan his original held in his hands.

" _Wow_ ," Don breathed. His smile was a mile wide.

"You're saying that a lot."

"Sorry! Sorry. It's just…" The original Don stepped closer and peered at the two sheets as he held them up side-by-side. "...it really _does_ copy human beings. Like, wholly and completely. This is-"

"-amazing," Niccolo finished. When Don's eyes drifted up, shocked, he grinned. "I know."

"Can you tell what I'm thinking right now?"

"Mmm." Niccolo tilted his head to the side. He lifted a finger to his chin. "You're worried that I'm going to turn against you somehow. Kind of like the clones do in the movies. Either I'll get jealous, or too independent, and want to pursue my own goals now that I have my own sentience."

Don blinked. "...well? And?"

Niccolo's hand fell back to his side. He folded the plan up and slipped it in his pocket. "The answer to that is no. I'm _you_. I know the reason why I'm here. Besides." He shrugged. "You can just throw water on me to make me melt whenever you want."

"Oh yeah," Don breathed. "Like when Leo threw his soda on that arm we accidentally copied…"

"Yeah," Niccolo grinned and nodded.

"Yeah," Don nodded back with a grin just as wide.

" _Yeahhhhh_ ," they said together and giggled when they mirrored the same exact thoughtful poses to one another.

 _This is great! The plan's back on! Nothing can go wrong now!_

* * *

The plan was _definitely not_ back on and _everything_ was going wrong.

"Glad you got someone to cover you, Don! Now you can hang with Casey and I!" April said and Don felt as if a rug had been yanked out from underneath him. The redhead didn't seem to notice. With a smile, she turned to the kid dressed in all black and paint splatters standing beside her. "Casey, you remember Donnie from the convenience store, right?"

Casey shrugged. He had one arm up against the wall and a pinky in his ear. His face was scrunched up in intense concentration. "April, dude, I gotta be real. I don't remember a whole lot about that night." He pulled his pinky free and flicked whatever ear wax he found onto the floor. "But cool. Whatever. Nice to meet ya again, I guess, Don." He rested his hand on top of the skateboard propped against his hip.

"Likewise," Don retorted dryly.

"Whoa, dude. Nice braces."

Don felt his entire form tense; his hackles raised. If he was a porcupine, he would have chosen that exact moment to bristle and fling a few spikes. "Yeah," he said slowly. " _Thanks_ , uh...look, I'm gonna go get a drink. I'll be right back."

"Okay!" April gave him a smile. "We'll be sitting on the couch. Come on over when you're ready to join us!"

 _The couch?!_

Casey turned and rested his skateboard against the wall before walking far too closely to April's side towards the seedy, faded-blue sofa in the corner.

"Uh-yeah! Yeah, okay! Sure!" Don waved and turned. He made a beeline for the door to the outside. He could already see Niccolo's face and hands pressed against the window above the ticket table. He had a worried frown pushed flat to the glass. From the look on his replica's face, Don could tell Niccolo already knew as well as he did: they needed a new plan and _stat._

* * *

"Okay, okay." Don pushed his flat hands down at his sides as he breathed a slow exhale. "One more Don. That's all we need. Just one more me. Three's not too many, right?"

Niccolo was nodding. His arms were crossed over his chest. "Right, right. Three Don's are perfect. Three Don's are good."

"Yeah. Three Don's are foolproof. What could go wrong?"

The printer scanned to life another Donatello. Just like before, the paper fluttered to the floor. It crinkled and writhed and with a momentary spotty pattern of an inky triage of colors, the figure within rose to its-no, _his_ -feet.

When he lifted his head, he blinked to the other two Don's. He smiled.

"I know the plan, guys!" Number Three presented a thumbs-up. "Sounds great! Just one problem: what if Casey catches me? I can't face him by myself."

Niccolo and Donatello looked to one another. As one, they nodded.

"He's got a point."

"Yeah, a good point."

"Four Donnies."

"Yeah. Exactly what I'm thinking. This is a Four-Donnie-Plan."

Donatello laid himself flat against the glass. A line of neon green swept him from the top of his head to the bottom of his heels.

 _Whirr, Click. Hiss._

* * *

Four Donatello's quickly became five when the fourth became a paper jam. The Paper Jam Donnie hissed and squealed, but could utter nothing more than wordless, scratchy exclamations-"... **gl nzpv rghvou dsrgvso**!" "Yeah, yeah, I know, buddy..."-so a fifth Don was printed. The new plan, which by this point it was known as 'Dancing with April v1.5,' was ready to be set into motion.

The original Don wandered back downstairs to the party, just in time to hear the tail end of a power ballad Chris Bradford was belting. The final note of his song rang out to every corner of the room. Don saw Raphael, standing by the snack table, wince and cover his ears.

The audience cheered and while they were distracted, Donnie turned to Numbers Three and Five hunkered by the stairway. He nodded. The two copies bounded forward. They grabbed Casey's abandoned skateboard by the wall and with barely-concealed snickers, they ducked back outside the shack and into night.

Don waited until Mikey's own peppy 80's karaoke song was finished-cheered extra loud for him-then stepped up to Karai to offer the news.

"Oh." Karai sent him a weird look but pulled the microphone to her mouth anyway. "Um...does someone own a skateboard here? It's being stolen. Like...right now. I don't know who's, but two kids are running down the road with-"

There was a sudden, sharp gasp and in the next instant, Casey Jones was a blur as he flew from the shack.

Don could barely hide his grin. _Success!_

He stepped down from the corner stage and attempted to steady his breathing. _Okay. Keep it cool, Don. Keep it cool. Now's your chance. April's all alone, now. No Casey to bother her. It's just you and her. Just you and her. Yeah._

Karai turned down the music real slow and popped an old love song onto the player. Don felt his heart beat faster than the tune.

"Hey, Goofus," said Raph from suddenly right beside him. Don jumped and squaked. Raph laughed. He had a surprisingly soft but teasing smile on his face. He lifted an elbow and nudged his little brother in the side. "Now's your chance. Sounds like the perfect time to ask April to dance."

"R-right…" Don's breathing turned thin. "...just gotta ask...ask April…"

Across the room, April closed her eyes and swayed to the music. Her head tilted left and right in a smooth slide and her hand tapped on the couch cushion. Had Don ever noticed how beautiful she was when she lost herself in a song?

"I...uh...I gotta-I gotta be right back!"

Without another word, Don darted off.

* * *

Several more copies later, and _now_ Donatello had the perfect plan to ask April to dance. Before, there had been too many variables to consider: Uncle Yoshi figuring out his scheme, Karai changing the song suddenly and therefore breaking the mood, incorrect lighting from the cheap spotlights that might glare in their eyes, etc. But now, with _ten_ Donnie's, the new plan would be perfect. There's no way they could fail.

The other Don's ran off and when they got into position, they each gave their signal. Upstairs in the attic, signal received, Niccolo was quick to usher Don out of the room with an urgent, "Hurry! Now's your chance!" With one final push, he propelled his original onto the upper landing and sent him a thumbs-up. "Good luck!"

"I don't need luck," Don preened. Already, he felt much more prepared than before. " _I_ have a plan."

Until the moment he found April very much _not_ out on the dance floor.

She was leaning against the wall in the hall branching off the converted museum space. Her head bobbed to the music. In her hand, she cradled a plastic cup filled with soda.

"April!" Don cried. His snapped his hanging jaw shut.

"Oh, hey, Donnie!" April smiled and waved. "Haven't seen you in a while. Enjoying the party?"

"W-w-what are you doing here?" Donnie asked instead. "Shouldn't you, uh, be out on the dance floor in like, uh-" -he checked his watch and laughed nervously- "-exactly forty-two seconds?"

April sent him a weird look. Then she laughed and pointed with her hand holding her cup to the door she stood beside. "I mean, ideally? I'm just waiting on the bathroom. Why, is Karai about to put a really good song on? I told her to save 'Macarena' for me."

"I-ha-uh-" Don angled his shoulders away from her and yanked out his folded sheet of paper from his pocket. _What do I do now-what do I do_ now?!

"You know what's really great about Gravity Falls?"

"I..." Don lifted his eyes. "...no?"

"Nobody here really cares if you can't dance." April's mouth was lifted in a wistful smile; her eyes focused on some distant point. She slid her free hand into her jeans pocket. "I can't say the same thing in bigger cities, y'know. But Gravity Falls is too small and too removed from the rest of the world to really care about...being 'cool.' So it's nice. I feel like I can just be myself and everyone else is busy just being themselves, too, and together we're just...the most authentic versions _of_ us there is, out in the middle of nowhere where nothing really matters. And I think that's pretty great."

Don didn't answer.

April looked to him. "For the record, I really like dancing. But I _really_ suck at it."

"No you do-"

"-Don." April raised an eyebrow. She laughed. "Please. I grew up in New York City. I _think_ I know what dancing is supposed to look like, and believe me, April O'Neil doesn't do it."

Donnie's eyes grew round. His hands clutching his plans lowered. "You're from New York City?"

"Yeah."

He placed a hand against his chest. "Me too! My brothers and I, we're all from New York."

"Really? No way. How come I didn't know about this?"

Don laughed. "I don't know. I mean, we've only been here a little over a week, so."

"That's amazing! What a small world. We've gotta trade Big Apple stories at some point, you know? I'd love to see what we have in common." The door to the bathroom opened and out walked a nervous young woman in a navy blue tight-fitting suit dotted with teal orbs. April gave Don a short wave. "Hey, though, be right back," she said and turned for the bathroom. "Don't wander too far this time, okay?"

"Okay!" Don smiled big as he waved. When April closed the door after herself, he absentmindedly hummed a contented tune to himself. He looked down at the list still in his hands and his smile softened.

With a satisfied note, Don folded the plan back up and stuffed it in his pocket. He turned.

"Hey! What are you doing, man?"

Don startled and slapped a hand to his collar. "Oh! Ha...hi, guys."

"Let me rephrase the question." Niccolo uncrossed his arms from over his chest and pointed a finger towards Don's chest. " _What's_ been taking so long? According to the plan, you should have been out on the dancing floor with April like, eight-point-five minutes ago!"

"Yeah, uh, about that." Don scratched the back of his head. "Y'know, guys, I've been thinkin'. What if I don't need the plan? What if just being myself and talking to her like a normal person works just fine?"

Immediately, the clone Donatellos' voices overlapped in an offended uproar.

"Did he just say what I think he said…?"

"Don't need the _plan_?!"

"You bite your tongue!"

"That's _really_ the most logical conclusion you came to?" Niccolo's voice carried over the rest, calm and cool and collected. "All right. Fine. If you're suddenly not going to stick to the plan, then maybe _you_ shouldn't be the Donnie that gets to dance with April."

Don raised his hands. "Hey...wait just a second. I thought you said you weren't going to turn on me."

"Yeah, well. That was _before_ you tried to go off-script." Niccolo turned to the other clones flanking him. "Don's? I think it's time for a little risk-management...starting with our own 'Classic Donnie.'"

"Wait, what? What?!"

* * *

Donatello had to hand it to his clones: at least they _tried_ to keep him contained. In the end, however, a closet wasn't exactly the best way of restraining someone who had three other brothers, one of whom was the self-proclaimed king of pranks. It took him only moments to get free and when he did, the only thing he could hear behind him was some warning screams from his Paper Jam copy-a scratchy " **Mvrgsvi mvvw blf wl zmbgsrmt yfg yv blfihvou**!"-and Niccolo muttering, "Hey, uh, guys...if _you_ were stuck in a closet, what would you do?"

"Break out."

He knew that the few fleeting seconds' head start he had before his clones caught up with him were fortunate for him to have. He needed to use these seconds wisely. He needed to come up with a plan to get rid of those clones.

He needed-

"Raph! Leo! Grab an unopened bottle and come with me!"

"Don?"

"What the-"

"-just _hurry_!"

Donatello skidded beside the table of snacks at the side of the party room. His arm snatched out to grab the nearest two-liter and as soon as it was in his hands, he shook it. Hard. He kept running, back towards the hallway he had just exited from, and set the bottle against his hip, angling it outwards.

He could hear footsteps come thumping up behind him as well as in front and the instant his clones rounded the corner from the stairway, he ripped off the cap from the two-liter.

The effect was instantaneous.

The pressured soda burst free and spewed outwards all over the hall. The several clones leading the way after him were caught in the spray and cried out when it made contact with their skin. With despairing cries and a few objecting "Boo!"s, they began to melt. Their images ran like bleeding ink; their voices blended into one another. Even Paper Jam Don began to disintegrate with gurgling shouts.

Raph made a half-choked noise from behind him. "There's _more_ of him?!"

Leo's voice was steadier. "Don, what is going on here? Why are there several copies of you that you're _destroying_?"

"It's a long story." Don gasped. He took a step forward and counted the puddles on the wooden floorboards. "Kind of a stupid story, really." He bit his lip and spun the cap back on the bottle tucked in his arm. " _Pineapples._ That's only nine."

" _Only_ nine?" Raph repeated, incredulous.

"Don, exactly how many clones of you are there?"

"Just one more." Don turned on his heel. He hurried between his brothers, still standing stunned behind him. He ran out to the dance floor. "And I think I know where he is…!"

* * *

"All right, guys!" Karai called into the microphone. Her voice amplified around the room. "It's been a great night so far! We've got just one more song, and then we get to vote on who will receive the Party Crown!"

The crowd cheered. Mikey could hardly stop his wildly-pattering heart. He turned to Chris Bradford idling nearby and called out, "Hey, Rad-Brad!"

The brunet snapped his head around. His baby blues blazed as if furious.

Mikey hurried up to him and smiled wide. "Look, man, I just wanted to say: whoever wins, it's been a _super_ fun party." He stuck out a hand. "So thanks. Thanks for making it a blast."

Chris Bradford flicked his tongue against his teeth in a _tsk_. The grin across his own face was condescending, steep. He placed his hands on his waist. "Aw, isn't that _cute_ ," he purred. A couple of his friends snickered from his sides. "It thinks it's gonna win."

Mikey blinked. His smile faltered.

... _it?_

"Hey, can you hear that?" Chris continued. He curved a hand around his ear and leaned in. His eyes widened. Mikey placed his hand behind his ear, too, for good measure. "Is that-are people clapping...for the _losers_?" With a low chuckle and sneer, Chris dropped his hand. "Yeah. Didn't think so."

A couple of Chris' friends laughed. Others cupped their hands around their mouths to call out, "OH!"

Mikey retained his smile as the others turned and clapped Chris on the back. They ushered him away and into the crowd of other partygoers. Mikey chuckled quietly to himself and pumped his arm in good cheer. "Yeah, haha. You guys sure are funny."

 _Yikes, I gotta win this so bad._

* * *

In the end, finding Niccolo wasn't hard. What _was_ hard was seeing his face, and seeing _why_ the clone looked so despondent while looking out over the dance floor.

"It's too late. We blew it, Don," his copy murmured. He had both forearms crossed over the banister on the upper level overlooking the partiers. His chin rested against his own printed skin. "We really blew it."

Across the room, leaning against the wall, Casey stood awfully close to April. Their two heads were bent together, murmuring words to one another and scrunching their faces up in barely-stifled laughter. Abruptly, April straightened up with a louder bark of laughter and shoved Casey's shoulder. This, of course, only made Casey guffaw harder.

They seemed happy.

Ice squeezed Don's chest tight. "Oh," was all he could think of to say.

"Yeah." Niccolo sighed. "Sorry, man." He lifted himself from the banister and turned to his original. "So I guess that also means you can disintegrate me, now. It's over. Job done. We failed."

Raph came up behind his younger brother and peered over his shoulder. His nose scrunched up. "Wait, is _that_ what this is all about? Getting with April?"

Leo strode up to the other shoulder, flanking Don on the opposite side. "Let me get this straight. Don, you used Uncle Yoshi's _copier_ to make clones of yourself, all just to dance with _April_?"

Don sucked in a sharp breath and turned around. "It-it was complicated, okay? It was all part of this _plan_ , and-" He stopped himself. "-and like I said before, it was stupid. This whole scheme was all just stupid. I know that, now. So you don't have to tell me, okay?"

Silence fell over the three quadruplets and the dejected copy.

Leo sighed. "Yeah, well, maybe it's a good time to get rid of that last clone. Fix this? And then later, maybe we can talk about what happened."

Don's shoulders slumped. The half-filled two-liter bottle he still loosely clutched in his fingers bounced against his knee. "Yeah," he murmured. "All right."

Raph nodded. He looked between the two Don's and couldn't tell who looked sadder. But if Leo wanted to back off and let them figure it out for now… "We'll see you later, Donnie. We'll still be by the snack table whenever you get back, got it?"

"Yeah. I got it."

Raph turned to look at Leo. Leo's eyes lifted back. When the eldest of their quadruplets nodded, the two turned and walked quietly away and back out onto the dance floor.

* * *

Mikey watched with a low frown as the Party Crown was lowered upon Chris Bradford's smug brow. He watched as Chris and his crowd of friends cheered and paraded him out of the Mystery Shack, all the way from the stage to the front door at the back of the party hall. He watched as all of the festivities finally began to wind down. And he watched, slumped on the elevated corner stage, as Lester and Jason made their way over to him, their faces difficult to read.

Mikey sighed and lifted his head from the vee of his hands. "I'm sorry, guys. I really thought I could beat Rad-Brad." _I thought I was the biggest partier, like...ever. But I guess not._ He pressed a finger to the ground between floorboards.

"It's okay, dude," Jason murmured. "Bradford totally cheated, anyway. Did you _see_ the way he was glaring at other peeps until they clapped for him? So, it's like, psh. Whatever."

"Yes," Lester uttered, low and raspy. His alligator still sat high on his head; its little beady eyes blinking out to the colorful, disco-sparkled world around it. "In the end, it matters not who won. All that matters that you _tried_. Chris Bradford will remember that. And so will all of us."

The corner of Mikey's mouth lifted in a small smile. He placed both hands on his knees and looked up to his new friends. "Aw. Thanks, guys."

"Besides!" Jason grinned wide and clenched both fists. "Now that Bradford's gone, we can _really_ get this party started, right?"

Mikey blinked and raised his head to the nearest clock. "But isn't it like-yeah, it's like, after midnight-"

"-no biggie!" Jason shrugged. "We'll just call our moms and see if they'll let us sleep over. No problemo, my dude!"

Mikey gasped, big and wide. He shot to his feet. "Wait, what, really? Are you guys serious? You'd want to _stay_?"

Lester's own smile was long and wide. "We are very serious, my friend-should you be open to having us." He breathed and slipped his baby gator from his head into the palm of his hand to scratch its head. "We may not have as many friends as Chris Bradford does, but we do have each other, and that, I believe, is just as good. If not more."

Mikey's smile could not have been bigger.

Feeling as if his heart might burst from inside his chest, the littlest quadruplet spun around to face the stage. "Karai!" His cousin lifted her head from the CD album pamphlet she had been browsing. "Put on another song! This thing's going _all night_!"

The grin Karai sent him was wicked. She pulled her headphones up from around her neck. "With _pleasure_ , Mikey."

* * *

 _Raph was right,_ Don thought to himself as he made his way back towards the party hall. His hands were in his jean pockets; his head hung low. _I really do get in my own way._

 _Literally._

He stepped into the doorway, looking out across the room. Karai was still behind the DJ set-up on the corner stage, swaying her body left and right to the electronic dance music she had blaring. Raph and Leo, though still nearby the dwindling snack table, had taken up moving to the beat in their own dorky, uncoordinated ways. Mikey and two other kids Don had never seen before were dancing together, happy and carefree and with big smiles on their faces.

And then there was April.

She stood against the wall where Casey had been with her just moments earlier, her head gently bobbing to the music. Cradled in her hand was another plastic cup full of soda.

" _Do you think I even have a chance with April? She's like, fifteen, and we're twelve."_

" _I don't know. But I_ do _know, you're, like, making zero progress doing it this way."_

The folded paper in his pocket seemed to burn.

Don fished it out and unfolded the plan one last time. His brown eyes scanned over the detailed sheet once, twice. Then, with a deep breath, he tore it to pieces. He stuffed every scrap in the nearest trash can and dusted the remains off of his palms.

 _Okay. Off-script it is._

He didn't know if he was expecting to feel dread or horror about this. But somehow, instead of anything else, he just felt hope.

With a small smile to himself, Donnie turned around and walked out onto the dance floor.

* * *

DSVIV WL DV TVG "WLMZGVOOL" DSVM GSV LIRTRMZO HXFOKGLI'H MZNV DZH "WLMZGL WR MRXXLOL WR YVGGL YZIWR"?


End file.
